Monday, 9 July 2012

Flight safety compromised

A shortened version of this is in this week's Big Issue in the North magazine.

High levels of ill health amongst airline crew, including pilots, are
compromising flight safety, according to the former British Airways cabin
supervisor who is behind a comprehensive survey into crew health.

Dee Passon, who retired on ill-health grounds last year, believes many
of the symptoms reported are the consequence of toxins released into aircraft
during flights. It is a view that both the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA)
and the Department of Transport (DoT) dispute.

Open to crew from all major airlines, Passon’s on-line international
survey was conducted anonymously in March 2009. Still then working, she feared
being dismissed from her £50,000 a year post. Today she is forced to get by on
80% less income after failing to recover from what she claims was “chronic low
level exposure from toxic or contaminated air containing engine oils or
hydraulic fluids that have been heated to high temperatures and pressures
within the aircraft engine or Auxiliary power unit and which enter the cabin
with the air supply.”

A doctor’s diagnosis that Passon was suffering from aerotoxic syndrome
was accepted by BA as grounds to pay an ill-health pension to the 54 year old,
but she later dropped her legal case for compensation against the company
saying, “it’s very difficult to prove an exact link between the cause and
effect as the airlines refuse to install detection systems and so unless
there’s smoke then detection relies on the crew’s smell.”

Passon’s analysis of the results of the first 1020 surveys –
including 50 from pilots - completed by currently employed crew members
from 24 countries was published recently in the Journal of Biological Physics
and Chemistry.

She also presented them at the Cranfield University seminar on
‘Inhalable Toxic Chemicals on board aircraft.’

23% of respondents reported they had taken no time off work due to illness.
This figure was matched by those having taken time off for depression - this is
more than double the national average. One-seventh had suffered from Crohn’s
disease, with one-eighth reporting high blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
A tenth suffered from eczema, and similar figures were recorded for insomnia
and migraine.

60 people - ten times higher than the UK National Average, reported
Cancer. Sarcoidosis of the lungs was reported by two people; considerably
greater than the UK average of 1 in 10,000 people. Meanwhile 380 of those
surveyed reported symptoms of numbness and pins and needles in face, hands and
feet.

A workforce concerned about their working environment was apparent from
the accompanying comments including ‘being constantly sick’, ‘constant
tiredness and lack of co-ordination’, ‘less stamina and needing prescribed
antidepressants’ and ‘living in a state of constant confusion.’ In total 45%
said they suffered from confusion, 50% had difficulty concentrating and 40%
suffered from memory loss.

Passon concluded: “not only is crew health being adversely affected as a
consequence of their occupational working environment but flight safety is
being compromised.”

She wants chemical detectors fitted to all flight decks. Passon
also wants all airlines to follow Icelandair by switching to a Nyco oil
with lower toxicity. This would avoid the use of organophosphate (Ops)
chemicals diagnosed as long ago as 1951 by leading British scientists as
poisonous. Ops have been blamed for the high level of suicides amongst
shepherds and for Gulf Way syndrome amongst soldiers who served in the first
Gulf War.

The DoT and CAA, which regulates all aspects of aviation in the UK,
disagree with Passon. A CAA spokesperson said: “Whilst noting the survey’s
results, our view is that it has not been conducted in a scientific manner and
that research to date has not identified evidence of exposure to chemicals that
could potentially lead to long-term health affects.”

Both Government bodies pointed to a 2007 report from the Committee of
Toxicity, composed of toxicologists from various universities. A DoT spokesperson said the study
“concluded that the evidence available did not establish a link between cabin
and pilot ill health, without ruling out one.”

Further research on five different aircraft types and undertaken by
Cranfield University and by the Institute of Occupational Medicine in Edinburgh
had said the spokesperson “shown no evidence for target pollutants occurring in
the cabin air levels exceeding available health and safety standards.”

Furthermore, only 207 contaminated air events had been reported to the
CAA out of 1.12 million cargo flights by UK carriers last year. Few passengers
had reported becoming ill, with only 244 written medical complaints in the last
ten years. Filters were unnecessary, as it was not known what particular
substance needed to be filtered out, said the spokesperson.

The studies appear to have convinced a previously
sceptical opposition Conservative Party. Four years, Theresa Villiers, now
transport secretary, called for “a full public enquiry to ensure the air we
breathe in aeroplanes is truly safe.” That demand has now been dropped.

Former airline pilot John Hoyte, who retired seriously ill aged 50 in
2005 and later established the Aerotoxic Association at a Parliamentary meeting
in 2007, criticised the Cranfield research.

“It was funded by the airline industry itself and it failed to release
data of any fume event that they created which exceeded health and safety
limits.”

Hoyte referred me to a passenger who had taken a family holiday in
Tenerife last year. Karen Isherwood of Lowton, Warrington, a business coach and
mother of three children, has since struggled to complete her part-time MBA and
plans to launch a new business have been put on hold.

She reports being healthy on boarding the outward plane, only to find
herself feeling dizzy on landing and “hearing voices as if I was coming round
from anaesthetic. I had a really racing heart and I felt like things were going
off inside my head. I kept saying I was all right before I got on the plane.”

A local doctor diagnosed her with having had mini-seizures of the brain,
but when the medication he diagnosed failed to provide any relief she was
admitted to hospital where a brain scan led to a consultant telling Karen the
nerves in her brain had been damaged and that recovery would take six months.
Since returning to Britain, Karen has visited a neurologist and a cardiologist.
Both have been unable to offer her a diagnosis.

Karen is now “Feeling a lot better, but only when not doing a great
deal. Any stress and I again feel I am having these mini-seizures in my head. I
am firmly convinced that my illness was due to something on the plane.”

As is Dave, not his real name, an experienced pilot from the North West
who is facing retirement on ill health grounds. From an early age he had wanted
to be a pilot, describing it as “a highly skilled job which I love as there’s a
real sense of achievement in handling a machine that weighs over 200 tons at
take-off and in which you have 300 people sitting in the back.” Further rewards
were a six-figure salary and a chance to visit most places in the world.

“As a pilot you have a rigorous health check annually but I visited my
own doctor to see if I was showing the first stages of Alzheimer’s.

I wasn’t but since when my
condition has not improved and I often forget things and people’s names”
explains Dave, whose doctor signed him on the sick without offering a
diagnosis.

Having seen his doctor’s report the CAA is currently not issuing Dave
with a licence and he expects never to return to work. Fortunately he worked
for one of the biggest airline companies in the world and will receive a
generous retirement package that is not available to pilots employed by the low
cost jet companies.

Dave recalls an incident a decade ago when the aircraft he was flying
had to be aborted on takeoff as it filled with fumes. However he feels his own
problems may have been caused by the walking visual inspections he was required
to undertake on landing.

“It was usual to see smoke burning residual oil out of the engines. You
could not avoid breathing at least some of this in,” said the pilot.

It is a problem he believes has worsened as airline companies, desperate
to cut costs by using less fuel, use more oil to run engines at hotter
temperatures.

Dave won’t be making a fuss for “fear of damaging my chances of getting
compensation, as I know that if I say this has anything to do with aerotoxins
the company will deny it as it may lead to passengers coming forward with
claims.” He does however intend bringing the condition to his doctor’s
attention and he worries about having met other pilots with similar
symptoms.